Stylos is the blog of Jeff Riddle, a Reformed Baptist Pastor in North Garden, Virginia. The title "Stylos" is the Greek word for pillar. In 1 Timothy 3:15 Paul urges his readers to consider "how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar (stylos) and ground of the truth."

The Vision (5.27.16): Sinners in the hands of the living God

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:31).

This
concept of sinners falling into the hands of the living God is perhaps best
known from a sermon preached by Jonathan Edwards on July 8, 1741 in Enfield,
Connecticut, which is credited with beginning the Great Awakening in New
England. His sermon was titled, “Sinners
in the Hands of an Angry God” (read it here).

It is
said that though he read the sermon from his manuscript in a monotone it
provoked gasps and tears from the congregation as they listened.

Nowadays
the sermon often appears in literary anthologies to show the supposed judgmentalism and legalism of the Puritans!

Edwards’
text was not Hebrews 10:31 but Deuteronomy 32:35 “There foot shall slide in due
time.” One of the best known passages in
that sermon comes in what he called the “applications”:

The God that holds
you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect
over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you
burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into
the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are
ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous
serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn
rebel did his prince;

But
then Edwards adds this:

and yet it is
nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It
is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night;
that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes
to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped
into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up.

The
hand of God is not just a hand of judgment and wrath but it is also a hand of
patience and preservation!

It is
a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. It is a blessed thing to be upheld by the
hand of the living God.

Would
you not choose to be among those who cling to Christ rather than be among those
who hatefully spurn him?